


Why you shouldn't kiss him, and why you do anyway

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: (barely), Angst with a Happy Ending, Bucky Remembers Stuff, Canon-Typical Violence, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Flashbacks, Inspired by Poetry, Kissing, Love Confessions, M/M, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Second Person, References to Suicide, Self-Hatred, Sleepy Cuddles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-15
Updated: 2016-05-15
Packaged: 2018-06-08 16:13:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,836
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6862549
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When you come back, you realise the desire to kiss him never left. You'd have kissed him when he was scrawny and always looking to get into a fight, you'd have kissed him when he took your mask off and said your name, you want to kiss him now more than any other time. </p><p>You remind yourself every night of the reasons why you shouldn’t kiss him, why you shouldn’t love him, why you shouldn’t even be alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Why you shouldn't kiss him, and why you do anyway

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by [this](http://wondersmith.co.vu/post/132031410781/reasons-to-not-kiss-him-1-you-werent-raised) beautiful, beautiful poem written by Natalie Wee.

When you come back (back from the dead, back to yourself, back to _him_ ), so do your feelings. Deeply buried under metal and screws and pain and memories that you can't even afford to forget, not anymore. You remember the kid in Brooklyn and you see the man in front of you and they're one person, albeit stronger than before, the man he's always wished to be. But the small smile he gives you is the same, and the voice that says _"Hi, Buck,"_ is laced with the same amount of worry that he's always had in him, and at the end of the day you're happy he survived, even though you haven't had the same luck. You're rugged and tough in a way that's not as pretty as it sounds, and you feel soulless and hopeless more often than not. The charm you used to have is gone, buried under the corpses of people whose end you brought yourself.

When you come back, you realise that just like before, you can't take your eyes off him. Where there was skin and bone before, there's muscle, but it's no less appealing and your eyes slide over him, slowly, taking him in, making sure that he's there, that he's _real_. He's taller than you now, which is strange and new and wonderful at the same time, he's always wished to be taller. You're happy his dream came true, even if it meant yours ended years ago.

When you come back, you realise the desire to kiss him never left. You'd have kissed him when he was scrawny and always looking to get into a fight, you'd have kissed him when he took your mask off and said your name, you want to kiss him now more than any other time. But it's far too late and you're far too broken, and when you see him kissing her it's like an ache that’s settled deep into your bones, and you give your best attempt at a smile that probably looks awkward at best. You're happy he found someone to love, even though that means you'll never find someone you love as much as you love him.

*

You remind yourself every night of the reasons why you shouldn’t kiss him, why you shouldn’t love him, why you shouldn’t even be alive.

1\. You weren't raised to love tender. 

Each time you remember Brooklyn, you remember faceless girls on your arms, more often than not blonde and fair with blue eyes, a poor substitute for the only person you ever wanted but could never have. You'd never give them a second glance once you were done. You've never truly loved unless it was him, and you've never been given the chance to love him properly.

As the Winter Soldier, the idea of love was foreign. You were a machine and machines didn't feel. Except you felt your victims' bones break under your fingers, and you felt them trembling as they took their last breath, and as you were coming to yourself you swear you _felt_ the smallest memory, of you and him in a small bed, struggling to get warm, and struggling even more not to tell him _how much you felt._

2\. When he's around all you do is tremble. When he's around you want to get on your knees. Look how much power he has over you. It's dangerous. 

Living together has never been harder. You used to share a room, and it used to be fine (except for the moments when it was not - when he was sick, when you were alone with your thoughts, when he was asleep and all you could do was watch him and think _‘someone will give him the love he deserves one day’_.)

Now you want to drop to your knees, tell him to hit you, a punishment for all the terrible things you've done. It wouldn't be enough, it never could be, but it would feel better than constantly seeing his pity. They would have wiped you clean if you showed half the will to submit to him as you do now. Sometimes you think that maybe that’d be better for the both of you.

3\. He’s too good at forgiving and you’re too good at violence. 

You can still see yourself with blood on your hands, on your skin and on metal fingers that are yours but are not really _yours_ , red like rust and hot summer sunsets and you can’t let yourself believe it could ever be that pretty, it’s not poetic, it’s just painful and one more reason why you can’t have him. You can remember every last kill, every plea to spare their lives, and you know you can never take that back and you can never make up for it.

You don’t deserve his forgiveness no matter how many times he whispers it to you in the dark, says _“I’m here”_ and _“It wasn’t you”_ and _“You deserve a second chance, Buck”._ You don’t deserve his forgiveness, or anyone else’s. You don’t deserve _him_.

4\. You know what they say about monsters. You know what happens to the boys who love them. Are you going to do that to him?

You’ll never be the Bucky he knows. Your life is too screwed up to bring him into it. He already treats you like fine china, as if you have _‘handle with care’_ carved onto your forehead. You don’t want him to walk around you like he’s trying not to step on eggshells. You remember the way you used to be before the war got the both of you, and how everything was so much simpler.

He doesn’t deserve to be broken just because you are. He deserves someone better, someone who can make him laugh like he used to, someone who can give him the family he’s always wanted. Someone who isn’t you. A wife, maybe. A couple of kids. Being a hero would be hard, but you ~~think~~   _know_ he could make it.

5\. Your hands don’t know how to be gentle. Think about the last thing that shattered in your palms. The fresh rosebuds crumbling between your fingers like a bruise. You wolf-boy, you war machine. You wouldn’t know how to hold something magic and not destroy it. 

You remember her dress before you remember anything else. Her black hair stark against the blood red of the fabric, her dark skin glowing in the night and her eyes alive, alive, alive. Until they weren’t. Until their spark disappeared as you snapped her neck, taking all her secrets with her to the grave. The dark red rose that was in her hair ended up in your metal fist without you even realising it. You crushed it, dropped it to the floor.

He holds your hand, sometimes. When you wake up from a nightmare and he runs into your room, or when you stare off into the distance for minutes at a time. He tries his best to bring you back. You’re always scared your programming will take over, that you’ll crush his hand like you crushed that flower, that you’ll crush _him_. You know it’s not possible, not with the way he heals, but you can’t help but fear the worst because you _were_ the worst there was. There’s no guarantee you aren’t now.

6\. If you hurt him it might kill you. 

You’ve lost so much, you can’t lose him. In a way, you’ve never had him, not the way you’ve always wanted, not the way you used to think about deep into the night. How his lips would feel on yours and how your hands would go into his hair and how you’d kiss him until it left you drunk and sober, a bittersweet paradox that you could never prove because you never got the chance, because you never deserved the chance.

You think about your mission, and why you pulled him out of that river, and you think _‘I could never give up on you, Steve Rogers’_ and _‘I could never hurt him, I_ **_won’t_ ** _hurt him’_ and you wish you could promise it were true, but you can’t because your own mind is your biggest enemy.

7\. If you hurt him you might kill yourself. 

You think about the many times you almost lost him, when you prayed to a God you never believed in that He would make sure he’s alright, that his frail body would make it. You prayed that He would take you instead, but it never happened. If you lost him, it wouldn’t have taken long for you to lose yourself too.

You look at him now, and you think about the fact that even as strong as he is now, he still bleeds. Something could still kill him. That something is not the flu now, but you. You’re the thing that puts him in danger, and you wouldn’t be able to handle yourself if you hurt him. You’d still give your own life for him if you had the choice.

8\. You are very bad at rehabilitation. This is one addiction you’d fail to give up. He’s going to ruin you for all other kisses and all other boys and you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to forget his name. 

You’ve never wanted anyone else. You remember seeing him kiss his first dame. You knew she was beautiful but he was more beautiful than you could ever imagine. His lips on hers made your stomach turn. You told yourself it was because of the alcohol, even though you hadn’t touched the stuff that night. You told yourself you were proud of him. And you were, you just weren’t proud of yourself.

You see him now and remember that kiss, and you can’t help but look at his lips, the way his tongue runs over them, not teasingly because he doesn’t even know what he’s doing, he doesn’t know what it’s doing to you. You wet your own lips, and for a second you imagine it was you he kissed that night, and it was you he left in a bar and never saw again. It would’ve been easier. You know you’d have always remembered him. You could never forget him, even if you only saw him in a dream.

9\. You still aren’t sure he isn’t a dream. 

Your mind goes back to that HYDRA base, to being wiped clean after every kill, after each time you started to get some of yourself back. You remember being given fake memories, fake lives. You remember what you used to forget every time, and it all feels so far away and it all feels so close and you’re not sure if you’re really free.

You think that maybe you’re still in mission mode and that this is your hardest mission yet. He’s beautiful like this, and you remember thinking the same thing decades ago, and it all feels blurry in a way that makes you think, perhaps you’re in-between missions, a computer turned off as to not waste energy.

10\. If you kiss him, you might wake up. 

You remember how it felt to _not feel_ anything. Your hands steady, your heartbeat calm, thoughts focused on hurt and pain and killing and not feeling, dammit. If you felt anything at all, you were compromised, you had to be rewritten. Play, pause, rewind. Play, pause, rewind, until the song stopped having any meaning at all.

You hope that if this isn’t real, you can have it a little longer. You can have _him_ a little longer. Well, you still don’t _have_ him, but you have this, whatever this is between you, grief and friendship and something unrequited you try to bury underneath your skin, just so you have a little more time with him.

*

You think you’ve managed to control yourself pretty well. Out of your room in the morning, have breakfast. Go to lunch with him if he has time, read until he comes back if he doesn’t. Have dinner, go back into your room. Try as much as possible to avoid him. But even with these instructions memorised, you can’t.

1\. Because he’s beautiful. 

You remember him in your old apartment, the rain against the window and his fingers holding a pencil, deep in thought about whatever he was drawing. You didn’t dare to hope he might sometimes think of you while holding that pencil, and you didn’t dare ask him. You thought you might ruin something if you did.

You’re sitting on the couch in the living room. He’s reading, and unlike in your memory, the sun shines on his face and his brows furrow a little, and he’s beautiful, good lord he’s always been, it’s maybe the only constant in your life you can cling to. How wonderful he is, how much you’ve missed him without realising, how much you love him.

2\. Because he asked.

You’re not sure if this is a real memory. It might be, but maybe your mind created it, because only your own mind would be cruel enough to do this. You remember him taking your hand, you must’ve been fifteen, maybe younger. You remember him saying _“I’ve never kissed anyone”_ and you laughing at him, not with menace but because you realised you wanted to kiss him until your lips bled. _“Of course you haven’t,”_ you replied, because it was so natural to tease him. He frowned. _“If you’re so high and mighty, why don’t_ **_you_ ** _kiss me?”_ he replied. You remember making a joke out of it and then regretting it immediately afterwards.

You’re still not sure if this is real. He’s in your personal space, his breath on your skin, which feels hotter and more alive than it’s been in years. He murmurs, softly, for your ears only, _“We’ve been playing this game for so long, Buck. Can I?”_ he asks. You can’t do this to him, because it’d mean ruining him. He looks into your eyes, and you shake your head, and you regret it immediately afterwards.

3\. Because he preceded _please_ with, _I’m not afraid of you._

_“Aren’t you afraid I’ll hurt you?”_ you ask him. He’s challenged you to fight him instead of someone else this time. You’re not sure if that’s a good thing. He grins at you, all teeth and machismo, his fiery personality not matching with his wiry body. _“I’m not afraid of you. You’d never hurt me more than I can take,”_ he says, and you want to kiss him, you want to do anything apart from what he’s asked you to. You don’t.

 _“You’re not the Winter Soldier,”_ he says firmly. You wish you could say that he’s right. _“You can do this, Bucky. You always could. I’m not afraid of you,”_ he says, and this time his smile is a small thing, but it says so much more than he could say with words. He believes in you more than you’ve ever believed in yourself, and you want to kiss him and kiss him and kiss him and never let him go. You do.

*

Your steps are careful as you approach. He seems taken aback by your response. You don’t want to scare him, so you give him the same type of smile he’s given you. His own smile returns and you walk even closer, into his personal space, until you’re breathing the same air and you’re breathing _him_ in, and you realise his shampoo is different until your mind catches up with you – of course it’s different, it’s been decades and now he can afford better. You take a deep breath, and he seems to be waiting for you. You put your hand on his chest, your real one, not the metal one, and then change your mind.

Your hands end up on his neck and you pull him close and kiss him. It’s slow and tentative because it’s been years since you’ve kissed anyone, and it’s the first time you kiss someone you love. The only person you’ve ever loved. He kisses back just as gently, not rushing you, and for the first time in your life, you’re thankful. You pull back and he’s still there, his smile getting bigger. Yours does as well, and you know you’re blushing and you try to associate this feeling with Bucky, with who you want to be. _“You are not the Winter Soldier,”_ he said, and for the first time, you believe it.

You end up curled up together on the couch, with his fingers in your hair, and him whispering in your ear _“You deserve this, you’ve always deserved this, I never thought you’d ever take me”_ and you want to say _“I never thought I could have you”_ but you don’t because you’re done fighting. You think you hear him say he loves you as you fall asleep, and you mumble it right back sleepily.

It’s the first time you sleep without any nightmares.

 


End file.
